It's accepted wisdom in tennis circles that surfaces have been made slower and more similar to one another—which is why the top players generally do well in most tournaments, no matter the surface.

It's also accepted wisdom that the serve-and-volley style has died—partly due to this slowing of the surfaces and partly due to racquet and string developments that have made the job of the baseliner easier. (I highly encourage you to read this article on the death of serve-and-volley.)

The most venerable serve-and-volley venue was Wimbledon, but even there, the style died in 2001.

Both of these developments should, in principle, lead to the good return players winning more games.

However, I've come across some highly surprising data that seems to contradict this idea.

While replying to a reader regarding my article about the best returners of the last 20 years, I noticed a very interesting pattern: Players in the 90s won, on average, a higher percentage of the return games than players in the 00s.

In other words, at a time where the serve-and-volley was still a viable and normal tactic, the returners were winning a higher percentage of the return games than they are now.

What's the explanation?

I've come up with a few, but I'll first present my statistical findings.

On average, the 90s had almost 15 players winning 30 percent or more of their return games. There is only one year, 1999, where fewer than 10 players won at least 30 percent of their return games.

In the 00s, only a few elite players have had returning percentages in the 30s. Since 2007, only five or six players each year have finished with such a number.

The number is slightly better if we go back to the early part of the decade: 2003, 2004 and 2006 saw 10, 10 and 11 players, respectively, with a return percentage of 30 or greater.

If we lower the percentage threshold to 25 percent, the pattern is the same. A greater number of players won 25 percent of more of their return games in the 90s than in the 00s.

So, what is the explanation?

If the courts are slower and the strings are better, shouldn't the return player be winning more, not less?

They should.

Were the players simply better at returning serves in the 90s? Are the servers significantly better today?

That seems an unlikely explanation to me, given string development and the death of serve-and-volley.

We need to take a closer look at the specific surfaces to understand this strange pattern.

While most surfaces have generally gotten slower, clay has gotten faster.

We no longer see a range of low-ranked clay court specialists beating the top seeds tournament after tournament. At Roland Garros this year, the Big Four all made it to the semifinals, even though only Nadal can be said to prefer clay.

If clay plays more and more like the faster surfaces, the server's advantage increases. So what do we see here?

Here are the yearly number of players who've won at least 30 percent of their return games from 1991-2011:

I've checked the other years in this period too; if anything, the best years of the hard-court return game were the first four years of the 90s, where at least 30 players were able to win 25 percent of their return games.

From 1995 to 2011, we haven't reached the 30-player mark.

Finally, what about grass?

The problem with grass is that so few matches are played on the surface that the statistics are less reliable when you view each year in isolation. Nevertheless, there is a clear pattern and it is highly surprising.

In the 90s—when Pete Sampras was ruling Wimbledon with serve-and-volley—more players had high returning percentages than they did in the 00s.

Here are the numbers of players clearing 30 percent every other year, followed by the number of players clearing 25 percent (note: I've included the each year from the early part of the 00s, as this is when serve-and-volley presumably died).

If anything, these numbers indicate that the the return player has had a more difficult time at Wimbledon after 2004.

2001—the last time a serve-and-volley player won Wimbledon (Goran Ivanisevic)—was one of the better years for returners (though you could argue that Roger Federer was at least partly a serve-and-volleyer when he won in 2003). So are 1995 and 1997, years when Sampras was at his peak.

2002 (featuring the first pure baseliner Wimbledon final) and 2003 were also good years for returners—but after 2004 the numbers drop.

So, what are we left with?

We can probably claim that clay has become faster, especially after 2007, making it harder for the return player to win games.

But on grass and hard court, the two surfaces more benevolent to the return player—and the two surfaces that have supposedly become slower—we still don't see any sign of a more level playing field

If anything, since 1995, hard courts have been harder for the returner—the same applies to grass since 2004.

How can this be?

There are, as I see it, two or three possible explanations, but I'm open for other suggestions as I'm genuinely puzzled by the data.

2) Since string and racquet technology has indeed improved the possibility of taking larger swings at the ball at times, the server actually has benefited more than the returner.

3) The game has simply evolved—players are fitter and can run all day, whereas in the past they needed to rush the net in order to preserve energy. But why has this happened?

4) Donnie Brasco's explanation: It's easier to break serve in a serve-and-volley game (compared to a baseline game) because the serve-and-volley game is inherently more risky. String technology has enabled better returns and thus forced the death of serve-and-volley.

But it's also forced players to combat the entire baseline game of the server, rather than play serve-and-volley.

I don't have data for the average serve speed over the period, but the number of aces players make during a year is more or less constant, with about 10 players a year hitting at least 500 aces.

Nevertheless, serve speed has probably increased, as is evidenced by Pete Sampras, universally regarded as one of the best servers of all time, clocking serves at up to 132 mph at the US Open 2002—something that Nadal, not known as the best server, replicated during his 2010 US Open campaign.

Is this the reason why return-game players, statistically speaking, haven't gotten better during this decade of slower surfaces and better string technology?

Perhaps it's part of it, but I'm still bewildered and surprised by the data.

Is Donnie's explanation the best we've got?

Given that grass and hard court used to be faster, we would expect the elite to have had better hold games on those surfaces than they do today.

However, this is not the case on grass (I don't have time and patience to plot data for every single year again, but I've looked at the statistics, and the hold game has become better both for elite and average players. You can play with the numbers here.)

It also isn't the case on hard court, though the elite hold-game players in the 00s weren't much better on this surface than on grass.

On clay, as expected, the hold-game elite have been better in the 00s than in the 90s—especially after 2007. We are starting to see hard court-like numbers.

Is the explanation simply that serve-and-volley is more risky and leads to more breaks? But why did the evolution to baseline tennis come later, rather than sooner?

Have string and racquet technology developments aided the server more than returner? Enough to reverse the effects of the slower hard- and grass-court surfaces?

I'm still not sure what the answers are, but the facts are contrary to what I expected prior to my research.

I'm keen to have a debate on it—hopefully we can come to some collaborative conclusions.

Re: Stats prove that it was easier to return in the 90's than in the 00's

Bleacher Report hahaha. There are plenty of stats nerds in here who'd love to analyse this and I look forward to what they have to say.

Like anything stats can used to say whatever you want. For example Monte Carlo had more breaks of serve than Hamburg when both were TMS events, anyone with functioning eyesight knew Monte Carlo was faster.

It's always about the average. There are plenty of flaws with this analysis, the title is misleading.

__________________“ On Nadal bumping him on the changeover, Rosol said: "It's ok, he wanted to take my concentration; I knew he would try something".

Wilander on Dimitrov - "He has mind set on imitating Federer and yes it looks good. But he has no idea what to do on the court".

Quote:

Originally Posted by Filo V.

I definitely would have preferred Gaba winning as he needs the points much more, but Jan would have beaten him anyway. I expect Hajek to destroy Machado, like 6-1 6-2.

One of the longer-running debates in tennis is over the degree to which statistics matter, at least in the sense that they seem to be of crucial importance in baseball—not just to how the game is presented and interpreted, but in the very fabric of its history.

Dissidents like to point out that the gaudy '22 forehand winners' stat can mean everything—or nothing. Remember how the tone for the entire men's final at Wimbledon this year was painfully established by a pair of horrible forehand errors by Rafael Nadal? Novak Djokovic won both points and the set, and he never looked back until he was the new champion. How many glorious 15-all winners would it take to offset the damage done by those two shots?

Those serve percentages and return-points-won stats can also be deceiving. What difference does it make that you won 82 percent of your second-serve return points if you flubbed of whiffed on the three that were attached to the only break points you saw all day?

However, that's just quibbling—you can say exactly the same thing about certain baseball statistics. The .312 hitter doesn't win you the World Series if he's collected an inordinate number of hits off weak pitchers in a sorry division, or if his average really is .212 with men in scoring position.

The search for reliable statistics goes on, in almost all sports, and it invariably makes the games we watch and play more interesting. I know the ATP, and our favorite ATP genius Greg Sharko, are always canvassing we writers for ideas that might improve or add increased relevance to statistics. I always thought it would be good to know what percentage of Big Points a player wins, those BPs defined as points played from 30-all, deuce, or advantage. Maybe we'll see that stat one day.

I'll be taking a closer look at some of the more striking ATP stats (MatchFacts, in the organization's patois—Ricoh MatchFacts if you don't mind giving a sponsor a plug) in the off-season. But now, if you haven't visited that module at the ATP website recently, let me give you a little pop quiz:

1 - Who has, to date, the best career first-serve return winning percentage (going back to 1990)?

2 - Who leads the ATP with return games won on grass over a career (active and retired, at last 50 matches)?

3 - Who are the top three career ace producers on clay?

If you just can't wait for the answers, scroll down to the bottom of this post.

The "by surface" component in these new, more comprehensive statistics is noteworthy. Nadal leads all players going back to 1990 in the break-points-converted-on-clay department. But he isn't even on the radar when it comes to the same statistic on grass. Seriously—I can't even find his name (he's 85 places down, at 40 percent—but tied with Andre Agassi, John McEnroe and. . . Brad Gilbert (among others). The only player whose conversion rate was better than 50 percent on grass is Christian Bergstrom (51 percent), but that's based on just 19 matches—a valid if not overwhelming sampling.

Now you can also view the full statistical tableaux of the top 200 on one page. The small print might make you dizzy, but you can just scroll down one column and see that Feliciano Lopez and Novak Djokovic have an identical 67 percent rate when it comes to break points saved in 2011. Only Gilles Muller (68 percent) and Ivo Karlovic (70 percent) posted better numbers among the Top 100.

Well, we could go on like this, which serves to remind me that there's another reason to keep statistics. And that's because they're a lot of fun. Frankly, I'm not sure that staring at the graph or chart where all these numbers and percentages are pulled together is easily converted into hard and fast conclusions about the overall superiority of one player or another. One obvious problem is that in some categories (as in the career break-points-converted percentage), a large number of players share the same number, and the range is narrow. In that case of BPs converted on all surfaces, it's between 30 and 46 percent. That's not insignificant, but the bunching is.

As any number of commentators has observed, you can't ever have too much information. In the next wave of statistics, somebody is going to find a way to combine and weigh the numbers in the individual categories and come up with something like an overall efficiency index. I have a strange feeling that if and when that happens, you'd come up with something like a mirror image of the Top 25 rankings, with perhaps one or two odd exceptions. But it's a good potential project—identify the key statistics that can quantify why Djokovic is No. 1, Nadal No. 2, and so forth.

But until that happens I'm open to all suggestions. And all statistics.

Re: Stats prove that it was easier to return in the 90's than in the 00's

Those return games won statistics don't surprise me at all.

The depth of the mens' game has increased significantly since the early 1990s. There are few gimme matches anymore except for the 1st and sometimes 2nd rounds of GS. If you don't have a very good service game you cannot maintain a ranking in the top 100. Everybody serves 120mph/195kph or faster with strong, well directed second serves. It used to be that most 2nd serves were easily attacked outside of the top guys and the best servers. There were always servers like Sampras, Goran, and Krajicek. But the quality dropped off significantly outside the top 10 or 20. The server had the advantage with faster surfaces, but the weaker servers in the lower ranks allowed for significantly more break opportunities.

Re: Stats prove that it was easier to return in the 90's than in the 00's

Quote:

Originally Posted by eduggs

Those return games won statistics don't surprise me at all.

The depth of the mens' game has increased significantly since the early 1990s. There are few gimme matches anymore except for the 1st and sometimes 2nd rounds of GS. If you don't have a very good service game you cannot maintain a ranking in the top 100. Everybody serves 120mph/195kph or faster with strong, well directed second serves. It used to be that most 2nd serves were easily attacked outside of the top guys and the best servers. There were always servers like Sampras, Goran, and Krajicek. But the quality dropped off significantly outside the top 10 or 20. The server had the advantage with faster surfaces, but the weaker servers in the lower ranks allowed for significantly more break opportunities.

Re: Stats prove that it was easier to return in the 90's than in the 00's

The whole article is very long-winded and should really be boiled down to this one sentence: "It's easier to break serve in a serve-and-volley game (compared to a baseline game) because the serve-and-volley game is inherently more risky."

Re: Stats prove that it was easier to return in the 90's than in the 00's

It kind of helps that everyone and his brother playing tennis is about 2m tall. Compare that to the grunting Spanish claycourt giants of the 90's averaging at about 1.70m and slender than a maple leaf.

And let's not forget that people like Roset, Krajicek, Ivanisevic loved playing on clay (that kind of clay) and simply excelled at it. Oh wait...shit...they didn't.

Even if they're gonna bring tar as a surface in the calendar (which I'm sure they will do at some point given the current tendencies) Isner would be virtually unbreakable most days.

Stop reading Bleacher Report, watch more tennis and stay in school. Glad I could help.

Re: Stats prove that it was easier to return in the 90's than in the 00's

nole fan knows i hate reading and haven't read a sentence of that article......i would like to know what do you perceive as superior returning? just returning the serve or winning a point on your opponent's serve?

if it's just putting the serve back in play, then definitely returning was way way tougher in the 90s.......if it's about winning return games, it's definitely tougher today because players execute an almost risk free game and good servers always have the safe first strike advantage......

Re: Stats prove that it was easier to return in the 90's than in the 00's

Quote:

Originally Posted by Start da Game

nole fan knows i hate reading and haven't read a sentence of that article......i would like to know what do you perceive as superior returning? just returning the serve or winning a point on your opponent's serve?

if it's just putting the serve back in play, then definitely returning was way way tougher in the 90s.......if it's about winning return games, it's definitely tougher today because players execute an almost risk free game and good servers always have the safe first strike advantage......

weak servers were always present, be it 90s or be it today......

great point .......in my book it's returning a serve while putting yourself in a neutral position on the court to win a point